


Death Roll of the American Crocodile

by walkwithursus



Series: Barbossa & Jack [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Age of Sail, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Death, Drowning, Emetophobia, Golden Age of Piracy, Graphic Description, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Implied Sexual Content, Insults, M/M, Nudity, Original Character Death(s), Overdosing, Sex Work, Torture, Unconsciousness, Violence, Vomiting, Waterboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 04:33:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14609406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkwithursus/pseuds/walkwithursus
Summary: Jack disappears in the night, and it is Barbossa who finds him the next morning. Perhaps someone else should have looked.





	Death Roll of the American Crocodile

Just off the hook of Cuba’s Northernmost coast, the Black Pearl crossed paths with a Dutch fluyt bound for the Cayman Islands. The Pearl gave chase and eventually the rival vessel was boarded and plundered, but not before a broadside left her hull peppered at the waterline and her mizzenmast badly splintered. 

After two weeks of refitting in the port of Havana, the Pearl was fit to sail once more. The crew were called back, and bright and early the next morning Barbossa found himself on the docks, monitoring the loading and stowage of the cargo by the stevedores. It had been Captain Jack Sparrow’s decision to set sail that day, but as the sun rose over the water it became clear that he was not present.

Barbossa had last seen him in the captain’s quarters the night before, and had thought him retired for the evening. When Barbossa had awoken in their shared bed that morning to find it empty, he had assumed the captain had risen to tend to his duties, the safety inspection and repair appraisal and the various other tasks that embarkment necessitated. 

Once he’d discovered otherwise, Barbossa was forced to split himself from his regular responsibilities and assume those the captain had left behind. As the hours dragged by he could feel his patience wearing thin, but in the face of the men he kept his composure, and a steadfast assurance that any moment the captain would stumble up the gangplank, sloshed, penniless, and grinning from ear to ear. 

When Jack failed to turn up by noon, Barbossa left the ship in the charge of the second mate and went off in search of the captain. Were the vessel under his command, he would have left Jack behind in whatever rank brothel he’d holed himself up in for the evening, just to serve him right. But as Jack Sparrow was the one man without whom the Black Pearl could not set sail, Barbossa was forced to poke his head into every tavern and whorehouse in the village, inquiring after the young ship captain with the beaded beard and the black smudged eyes. 

None of the barkeeps had seen him in days, nor had any of the brothel mistresses. Every new avenue was a dead end, and by the time he’d exhausted all Jack’s usual hants Barbossa was beginning to wonder if he would not be carrying the man’s corpse back to the Pearl, the victim of foul play in the night. 

It was not so far-fetched a notion, and the thought quickened Barbossa’s pace. 

At long last he tracked the captain down to one of the seedier Havana whorehouses, tucked far inland of the little port town. The owner of the establishment gave him the room number, and Barbossa ascended the creaking staircase to the sounds of coupling men and women in his ears, along with the drum beat of his own heart. The noise was deafening, but not nearly loud enough to quell the din of his own thoughts, which demanded to know at which point during the night Jack had decided to seek out the company of a whore -- before or after Barbossa had rolled off of him and kissed his open mouth goodnight? 

The handle to Jack’s room did not budge. A swift kick loosed the locked door from its hinges, and it hit the floor on the inside of the room with a crash so loud the building’s foundation rattled. Barbossa walked over it, heavy boots splitting the wood along the grain, and peered around the dimly lit space. It was cramped and windowless, furnished with little more than a mattress and a chest of drawers, and the stench that greeted him was so powerful it burned his nostrils; sour, unwashed bodies and the sweat of sexual exertion.

One of the figures on the bed roused, a man with pale skin and dirty blond curls. His mouth gaped open as he caught sight of Barbossa, and he immediately snatched the bedsheet around his naked waist. 

_“Out.”_

The word was barely human on Barbossa’s dried out tongue. His vision blurred around the edges, and he watched the whore flounder for a response as though through a veil.

“This is my room!” The man cried at last.

Barbossa drew the flintlock pistol from his belt and cocked the hammer back with his thumb. In a sudden burst of agility the blond man jumped out of the bed and scurried toward the far corner to cower, leaving the white sheet trailing in his wake. 

Jack Sparrow lay face down on the vacated mattress, passed out in his shirt and breeches. Barbossa flipped him roughly over and pulled back the skin of one eyelid, watching for the slightest constriction of his pupil to ensure that he was alive. The response was weak. Barbossa smacked his cheeks, held his nose shut, shook him by the shoulder, but Jack was out cold. 

There was nothing for it. Barbossa threw Jack’s body over his shoulder, limp as a ragdoll, and turned to leave the way he’d came. The naked whore blocked his path. 

“Hang on just a second! He hasn’t paid me yet,” the man accused, holding out his palm in expectation, as though this grizzled stranger would dig in his own pocket to pay for the captain’s night of frivolity. 

Barbossa shot the whore just off-center of his chest. His pretty pink mouth rounded in surprise, and as he collapsed to the floor Barbossa glanced over his shoulder to see if the sound of the pistol firing had roused Jack from his slumber. 

Nothing. 

The captain’s jacket and waistcoat lay in a pile on the floor, along with his weapons and the boot that wasn’t already on his foot. Barbossa tucked the belongings securely under his free arm and stepped over the whore’s body on his way out the door, narrowly avoiding the blood that had begun to puddle in the dust. 

The midday heat was blistering overhead as Barbossa marched toward the docks, the unconscious captain draped haphazardly across his shoulder. Jack’s head knocked against the back of his thigh with every other step, and Barbossa hoped it hurt, hoped that every heavy thunk was scrambling his pea-sized brain just a little bit more than it already was. Heads turned as the pirate passed, but their curious gazes slid off him like water off a duck’s back, focused as he was on placing one foot in front of the other.

Barbossa labored a quarter of a mile before his shoulder began to ache, and as the dormant pain in his crippled leg grew more pronounced he was forced to realize that spite alone could not carry Jack all the way back to the Pearl. 

He stopped on the porch of a clapboard tavern and slung Jack off his shoulder. The captain stumbled instantly on his feet, but before he could fall Barbossa snatched him by the hair and slammed him bodily against the building. Bloodshot eyes opened and found Barbossa’s face, and Jack’s features melted into a warm, guilty smile.

“Hector,” Jack murmured.

The sound of his name on Jack’s soiled tongue brought Barbossa’s blood to boiling. He could smell the rank fetor of the whore’s skin on his breath from when Jack had undoubtedly sucked his filthy cock -- and rum. So much rum it nearly masked the scent of all else. Jack’s eyes fluttered and rolled back, and he began to slide down the wall, once more losing consciousness. 

Barbossa brought the back of his hand so hard across Jack’s face his knuckles cracked. Jack crumpled like a marionette, but Barbossa’s firm grip on his hair kept him from collapsing to his knees. The force split his bottom lip wide open, and a dark rivulet of blood dribbled down into his beard. 

There was a water barrel a few feet to their left, the surface of which was covered in a film of thick green scum. Barbossa dragged Jack to it, dug his fingers firmly into the man’s scalp, and plunged his head under. Within seconds Jack began to struggle feebly, arching his back and twisting his head from side to side. Barbossa pushed him in further, laid his free arm across Jack’s shoulders and hefted his body weight against him to keep him down. The ripples of the water’s surface gave way to bubbles, small and then larger as Jack released the last of the air in his lungs. Barbossa watched with mounting satisfaction as his body began to thrash, fingers scrabbling for purchase against the slippery sides of the barrel. The bubbles stopped, and Barbossa yanked him up. 

_“Heeuuuuugghhh!”_

Jack gasped desperately for air, sucking it into his lungs as water streamed from his nose and mouth. Barbossa allowed him that one breath before dunking him again, and again, three times, by the end of which Jack had vomited and was shuddering violently from head to toe. 

Barbossa let him drop. Jack hit the floor of the porch and turned immediately onto his hands and knees. Another gush of water poured out of his mouth, puddling on the tightly packed boards and seeping through the cracks. Barbossa took a single step to the side to avoid bringing it into contact with his boots. 

Jack took a while to recuperate, hacking up long strings of bile every time a cough wracked through his shivering body. Barbossa watched the display unflinchingly, until at last Jack finally sat back on his haunches and turned his face up toward Barbossa, eyes half closed and jaw slack. The cut on his lip was still bleeding, but the blood on his chin had turned pink from the water and the slime of his own saliva. Jack wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt and moaned. 

“I think you chipped my tooth.” 

The rawness of Jack’s throat made his voice hoarse. Barbossa glanced at his own hand and noticed for the first time a small cut just above the ring on his fourth finger, the perfect size for a tooth to have gouged him as he struck Jack across the mouth. He smiled grimly. 

“Then let it serve as a reminder to ye not to miss the summons to your own ship,” Barbossa replied without compassion. 

Jack said nothing else as he dabbed at his swollen lip, his breath ragged and audible as it wheezed in and out of his lungs. There were no questions of why or what for, no apologies or flying accusations. This was not the first time Jack had lost sight of himself in port, and it most certainly would not be the last. Once they left Havana there would be no further mention of Jack’s indiscretion, nor of the punishment Barbossa had seen fit to inflict upon him. And when Jack inevitably strayed again the process would repeat, a cycle of betrayal and vindication that was equal parts vital and damaging to their commitment to one another. 

Barbossa sniffed, hawked, and spat on the wood next to Jack’s feet. He’d dropped the captain’s pile of belongings when he’d thrown him off his shoulder, and he kicked them towards the man now. Jack’s pistol skittered off the porch and landed in the mud.

“Get to the docks,” Barbossa said, and without waiting for a response he turned and strode away, doing his utmost to mask his worsened limp and leaving Jack alone to pull himself together.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Please consider leaving a kudos and comment.


End file.
